BANDANNA

An Opera in Two Acts & a Prologue

Music by Daron Hagen | Words by Paul Muldoon

SYNOPSIS

Miguel Morales (Othello) is the police chief of a small town on the USA-Mexico border. He is married to a mestizo woman named Mona (Desdemona). His lieutenant Jake (Iago) spends his off-duty hours spiriting people across the border illegally; Kane (a Caucasian labor organizer from Chicago) is stirring up trouble. The action centers on the wedding of Jake and Emily (Emilia), and features the unfortunate planting of Mona's bandanna by Kane and Jake in Cassidy's (Cassio) pocket, and the subsequent murder of Mona by her husband. Set on the "Day of the Dead," the opera's unifying concept is the idea of the borderlines between emotional, metaphysical and moral states.